Tornado touches down on Darling Downs

BREAKING: A tornado that lasted five minutes and sent debris flying has been captured touching down on the Darling Downs.

A low precipitation cell produced a "landspout tornado" on the eastern side of Drillham, about 45km west of Miles.

A land-spout is a kind of tornado not associated with a thunderstorm.

The convective clouds can produce very strong up-drafts and are considered tornadoes due to the rotating column of air in the centre.

The landspout tornado occurred about 5.30pm yesterday and only lasted for about five minutes, sending debris flying but no serious damage was caused.

A few residents were also able to capture the work of mother nature on camera.

Higgins Storm Chasing investigated the photo evidence along with the radar and satellite review to determine the cause of the tornado.

"Scattered showers were moving through the area with one appearing to be directly only or very close to a dry line boundary which can sometimes add some localised rotation to cells as winds come from differing directions.

"The cell barely produced a shower, with any properties under it lucky to get more than 0.2 to 0.5mm out of it, the cell also never produced lightning according to lightning trackers."

"The cloud rapidly formed from basically nothing into this storm looking cloud, at the same time a lowering occurred which appeared to be nothing special until the whole thing started twisting and the lowering kept dropping," he said.